The government should be proactive in taking measures to prevent a shortage of food supply, senatorial candidate Herbert “Bistek” Bautista said on Wednesday.
Bautista made the call following the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) forecast that supply of basic items is likely to fall short of demand.
“We should not wait for the shortage to be staring us in the face before we act,” said Bautista, a former Quezon City mayor who is running for senator in the upcoming May 2022 elections.
At the same time, Bautista rejected NEDA’s recommendation to ramp up importation as a solution to projected food shortages.
In a March 18 report, he noted NEDA projected a rise in inflation because of supply issues in food and other commodities and the effect of increasing oil prices on transportation.
NEDA said there is ample supply of chicken, upland vegetables and rice but local production, especially of vegetables, is likely to yield only 1.3 million metric tons or 20 percent short of demand.
“Why is importation our knee-jerk reaction?...There should be first an honest-to-goodness inventory of production on the ground,” said Bautista, who is running under the UniTeam Alliance of former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr.
“We can’t know the real situation by just sitting behind our gilded desks,” the senatorial bet added.